Tag Archives: amber rum

Post navigation

Cane&Abe is a rum that just dares to be different. Its bottle, what with the loop on its neck, looks more appropriate to moonshine than rum. The native-american style eagle on the label, again, doesn’t exactly screech of high seas adventure. And being made in Madison, Wisconsin; arguably the LEAST piratey city in the entire US of A? Now my mind is blown.

But let’s not rush to judgement – it is, after all, the rum that matters. At a glance it’s a deep amber, although in the glass it’s significantly lighter. The nose is prominently butterscotch and sugarcane – one of which is a common element in rum, the other less so (I’ll leave it to you to figure which is which.)

On the tongue, Cane&Abe is again like hot butterscotch – liquid candy for adults. Light and sweet, this isn’t exactly fit for putting a kraken into a half-nelson while making out with a mermaid and kicking a spanish corpse. But while it’s not the stuff of pirate legend, it IS pretty decent in its own right, and might be worth checking out if you’d like a break from charred gunpowder and molasses.

Wine bottles should stand tall and proud, but I’m happiest when my rum bottles sit short and squat. It just seems right that a rum stay true to its maritime heritage by maintaining a low center of gravity and wide footprint so to better brave the rolling seas. Or if ashore, to better survive the accidental bumpings that so often occur in the immediate viscinity of delicious high proof spirits.

Fortuna, Ron Reserva Exclusiva is an eight year aged rum in a classy, lovely squat bottle. The green glass disguises the hue of the rum within, but this is soon remedied by breaking the foil and removing the cork. Upon doing so, the nose is immediately met with a combined sweetness and muskiness – caramel intermingled with subtle vegetation. In the glass, this rum is a light amber much akin to honey in color.

Don Q Rum, named for the windmill-slaying Don Quixote, boasts a commendable line of standard and flavored rums, with Gran Anejo being their flagship, top-of-the-shelf label. The packaging alone is a spectacle – a lovely, squarish glass bottle housed in a golden, satin-lined box that remarkably slides open from the center. But the fun doesn’t end there, as the bottle’s glass stopper is hollowed out in such a way as to measure out a shot for you – a bit gimmicky, sure, but so spiffy that I just can’t find it in my heart to criticize. Continue reading →

I’ve reviewed many a rum over the years – and sampled far more than even that. But Ron de Jeremy is most certainly my first experience with a rum made in honor of an adult film star. Ron Jeremy is a legend far beyond his work within the adult film industry – indeed, he’s one of those people who are famous simply for *being*. You don’t need to be a fan of his work to recognize him in the street, nor, I’d wager, to enjoy his rum.

Reviewing Ron de Jeremy invites all sorts of temptation at juevenille humor. But I’m going to try a different tack – let’s talk about the rum itself. In the bottle, Ron de Jeremy is a class act. A short rotund package (god help me, the jokes aren’t so easy to avoid after all… strength…) Continue reading →

It’s just a fact – Wisconsin is known for cheese. You want to know two things Wisconsin isn’t known for? Rum and pirates. But surprising as it might be, Wisconsin now has both.

“Roaring” Dan Seavey was indeed the only person ever charged with piracy on the Great Lakes, and it’s for this reason that the Great Lakes Distillery opted to name their very first rum in his honor. A scalliwagg of the early 20th century, Roaring Dan was hardly your typical golden age swashbuckler – but he was mean and cantankerous enough to put even Blackbeard to shame. Indeed, Blackbeard never used his own ship as a floating whorehouse, nor did he dispatch an opponent in a bar brawl by dropping a piano on his head.

Like the seagoing miscreant whose name it bears, Roaring Dan Rum is far from typical. Continue reading →

I’m giving this rum zero stars. Is it really a zero star rum? No – probably a three and a half would be more fitting. Maybe even four. But I’m a longtime fan of Mount Gay Extra Old – a $30 rum that easily achieves 4.5 stars. And so when I try Mount Gay’s new, $100 bottle, I have high expectations. And sadly, these expectations came crashing down. Not because it’s bad, but because its sophistication has reached such a level that it no longer feels like a “rum” experience. Mount Gay 1703 has forgotten rum’s roguish past, and this is why I give it no stars whatsoever. Continue reading →

One of these days, I think I need to write an article on which I judge various rums based on nothing more than their packaging. It might sound laughable, but in truth packaging can tell you quite a lot about a rum (or at least, what the manufacturers think of their product – or rather, what they want you to *think* they think of their product.) And also, reviewing rums based on packaging alone would protect me from those embarrassing times when I nearly finish the rum before I’ve bothered to review it. Such is the case with Vizcaya VXOP – it’s been on my shelf for a terribly long time, and I’ve stolen a glass now and then to the point as to be nearly empty. And yet, I never reviewed the damned thing. Continue reading →

Back in 2006 I reviewed New Orleans Cane Amber Rum. Since that time, Cane Rum has been discontinued over apparent confusion between itself and 10 Cane Rum. In its place we now have Old New Orleans Rum, which I think is actually a much better label anyways as it not only highlights itself as being one of the few continental US rum distilleries, but in a pirate town ta boot 🙂

Now I would generally expect that in such cases, while the bottling has changed, the rum might not. My bottle of Cane Amber is long gone (I have a second, but refuse to break the seal for this review – sorry!), so I can’t really do a side-by-side comparison. I do recall Cane Amber as being rather more scotch-like than rummy, but this is really all that I have to go on.

In the bottle, Old New Orleans 3 Year Aged Rum is a nice, basic brownish amber. The bottle is clean and classy, and corked in the manner of all self-respecting rums (with a few exceptions.) To the nose, Old New Orleans smells of sweet sugar cane, vanilla, and just a hint of over-ripe fruit. It comes across as being light-bodied, and perhaps a little alcoholly. Continue reading →

I’ve been reviewing rums for some years now, but tonight we’ve hit a first for me – a rum from the land down under. I’ve heard legends that such rums exist – even stories of one with a polar bear on its label, which makes no sense whatsoever. This is not the polar bear rum – this is another rum. One with a spot on its label. A red spot.

Inner Circle Rum is bottled and labeled in an understated, classy manner. Its website boasts that this is a rum not created for the likes of us – the bourgeois, pedestrian sorts – but was rather developed for the upper, snobby crust of society (and yet the website also boasts a skull&crossbones pattern in the background. Go figure.) It also boasts many awards – a factor that means increasingly less to me the more I learn that the folks who bestow such awards have entirely different expectations of rum from myself.

Pirate’s Choice is an unusual rum. It bears special consideration in several respects. First, it was first distilled in a makeshift (and very illegal) contraption built on the second story of a scuba shop in Key Largo. This is highly braggable. Now created in a more professional (and legal) distillery, the rum is sold in classy squat bottles, complete with labels featuring a silhouette of a pirate ship at rest as a storm approaches. This is beautiful. And, most noteworthy of all, no rum since the golden age of piracy has gone through such effort to introduce, insert, and endear itself to the pirate community. And this, my friends, is remarkable and admirable. In fact, I first met the president of Pirate’s Choice at PyrateCon 2008 in New Orleans, where he was giving away t-shirts, stickers, temporary tattoos, and countless samples of his product to every rogue, wench, and scalliwagg he could find (and being PyrateCon, he found lots of them.) However, this wasn’t the first I’d tasted Pirate’s Choice – I’d had a sample some months prior – at Pirates in Paradise in Key West. As I write this review, Pirate’s Choice is currently promoting itself at the Hampton Blackbeard Festival, with plans to attend the Port Washington Pirate Festival in turn just one week later. In short – Pirate’s Choice Rum is busting its hump to be noticed by the pirate community, making it the first and only rum to look at modern day pirates and see a viable market worth persuing. I suppose this could be seen as a cold business strategy, but I actually view it as heartening. I mean, when’s the last time Captain Morgan gave a squat about us? And HE’s supposed to be a pirate! Continue reading →